My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

present simple
I pirouette
present continuous
I am pirouetting
present perfect
I have pirouetted
present perfect continuous
I have been
pirouetting
past simple ( also known as
preterite)
I did pirouette, I
pirouetted

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imperfect
I used to pirouette
past continuous
I was pirouetting
conditional
I would pirouette
pluperfect/past perfect
I had pirouetted
past perfect continuous
I had been pirouetting
future
I will pirouette
future perfect
I will have pirouetted
future continuous
I will be pirouetting
future perfect continuous
I will have been
pirouetting
Famous last words
‘I am about to – or I am going to – die. Either expression is correct.’
F
RENCH GRAMMARIAN
D
OMINIQUE
B
OUHOURS
,
WHO DIED IN
1702
Back to the future
In the future tense , shall refers to the first person, will to the second and third.
So: I shall be at home tonight. Will you come round?
But if you want to be emphatic, reverse the trend:
I will be ready on time, I promise.
I don’t care what your wicked stepmother says: you shall go to the ball.
I shall drown, no one
will save me!
I should like to be saved but everyone is
ignoring me.
I will drown, no one
shall save me!
I am determined to drown; I forbid anyone to
throw me a life belt.
Judging by your mood…
Verbs, like the rest of us, act differently depending on which mood they  are  in.
There are three moods: indicative , imperative and subjunctive .

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The indicative mood makes a statement or asks a question:
I’m wet, I’m cold and I’m hungry.
Winter is almost here.
He will come.
Is that the best you can do?
The imperative mood gives us a command:
Chill out!
Do as I say!
Don’t eat the daisies!
And even the more politely phrased: Please look after this bear.
Easy-peasy.  Unfortunately  the  subjunctive  mood  is  so  complicated  that  it
deserves a subheading of its own.
If only it were that easy
The subjunctive sounds scarier than it is, and has a tendency to fill people with
horror. Let’s start with a couple of examples:
I wish it weren’t going to snow again (but it is).
If it were to snow (which it may or may not do, we don’t know yet), they would
not be able to get home.
I  were  or  it  were  may  sound  odd,  but  they’re  right  when  you  are  using  the
subjunctive.
Rule: If you know something for a fact use was . If something is contrary to fact,
or if you are imagining a future or different situation to the one you are in, use
were .
When I was young (fact: I was  young  once)  I  was  taught  Latin  (it’s  true,  I  was
taught Latin).
When he was young and handsome (he was young and handsome once) he  was
also arrogant.

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I was that man (you were indeed).
When I was poor (I once was indeed poor), I wasn’t unhappy.
but
If I were you (but I’m not), I should teach myself Latin .
If I were to teach you Latin (supposing that I taught you Latin), would you study
hard?
If I were to be young and handsome again (but I can’t be, alas), I wouldn’t be so
arrogant about it .
If I were that sort of man (but I’m not).
If I were rich (but I might never be rich), would I be happier than I am now?
I wish I were taller (but I am currently stuck at this height).
A number of set phrases in English – come what may  ,  far  be  it  from  me  ,  the
powers that be – use the subjunctive, but the joy of set phrases is that you don’t
have to think about them.
Rattigan (child genius): ‘If only that was possible.’
The Doctor: ‘If only that were possible. Conditional clause.’
Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem
*
‘I wish Bernard Cribbins was my grandad.’
SFX Magazine ,
HAVING DECLARED THE FORMER QUOTATION
BEST LIN E
Sic transit gloria…
A transitive verb allows the subject to perform an action on an object (see
here
for more on subjects and objects):
She slapped his face.
She slapped what? His
face.
He pulled the communication
He pulled what? The

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cord.
cord.
Smart Alec: Transitive verbs with one object only are called monotransitive (I
corrected my teacher ). Verbs with both a direct object and an indirect object are
called ditransitive (The teacher threw the board rubber at me ).
An intransitive verb acts by itself:
I
sleep.
I cannot sleep
something.
I
fall.
I cannot fall
something.
Famous intransitives
‘Jesus wept.’
St John’s Gospel
*
‘Thus with a kiss I die.’
S
HAKESPEARE
, Romeo and Julie t
Just to confuse things, some verbs can be transitive when used in one sense and
intransitive in another. These are known as ambitransitive verbs .
Transitive
Intransitive
He drank his
coffee .
He drank like a fish.
She read the
menu .
She read during
dinner.
I gave up
cigarettes .
I give up.
He kissed her
They kissed .

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hand .
Tip: To check whether a verb is intransitive, place a full stop directly after it and
see if it makes sense: He died. You survived . But he hit. (Hit what?) She threw .
(Threw what?) A transitive verb needs an object to complete its action.
Verbal warning
Verbal nouns or adjectives are formed from verbs but they perform the function
of nouns or adjectives, and there are three kinds of them: participles , infinitives
and gerunds . None of these can act on its own as a verb. Instead, each helps a
verb to do its job.
Participles
A participle is  a  non-finite  form  of  a  verb  used  with  an  auxiliary  verb  to  form
some compound tenses.
*23
It can also be used in noun , adjectival or adverbial
phrases such as:
Going to the casino is a sure-fire way of
losing money.
noun phrase , the subject
of the sentence
The horse favoured by the tipsters seemed
to lose interest at the second fence.
adjectival phrase ,
describing the horse
She stormed out, slamming the door so
hard that the mirror fell off the wall.
adverbial phrase ,
describing how she
stormed out
Infinitives
As we saw
here
, this is the basic form of the verb preceded by to , but it is also
used in some compound verb forms such as:
I was going to text you my address.
I used to go to a lot of concerts.
Or following verbs expressing feelings, or to give a reason for an action:
I would love to see her again.

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Don’t forget to wash your hands.
We built a fence round the garden to keep the dog under control.
Gerunds
‘What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?’
P
ERCY
B
YSSHE
S
HELLEY
, Love’s Philosophy
A gerund is a noun formed from a verb by adding -ing , so it looks exactly like a
present participle, but is used in a different way. When the going gets tough, the
tough  get  going.  The  first  going  is  a  gerund:  in  this  sentence,  it  performs  the
same  function  as  a  noun.  To  test  this  statement,  try  substituting  something  you
know is a noun:
When the exams get tough…
When the meat gets tough…
But in the second part of our original sentence, going is the present participle of
the verb to go , linked to the auxiliary verb get to make a complete, finite verb.
Here’s another example to help you spot the difference:
I admire the girl posing
for that photograph.
present participle , referring to the girl who
is posing for that photograph
I admire the girl’s
posing for that
photograph.
gerund , referring to the way she is posing,
but not necessarily the girl herself
Note  the  cunning  use  of  the  apostrophe  here  –  it  carries  a  wealth  of  meaning.
And  guess  what?  There  will  be  lots  more  about  apostrophes  later  in  the  book
(see
here
). Oh goody, can’t wait .
K
IND OF FUNNY-LOOKING
(
OR
, A
DJECTIVES
)
Most  of  us  were  taught  the  simple  rule:  an  adjective  is  a  ‘describing  word’.
Adjectives modify nouns or pronouns. They tell us what they are like: what they

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look like; how big they are; and how many of them there are. For example:
An ugly bug
A ghastl y girl
A blue moon
Thirty people
Adjectives can be derived from proper nouns to describe such things as historical
periods  (Elizabethan  ,  Jacobean  ),  literary  or  musical  styles  (Shakespearean  ,
Dickensian, Wagnerian ), nationality or geographical location (French,  Parisian
) or other things more loosely associated with people or places (a Freudian slip,
Victorian  values,  a  Caesarean  section).  The  suffix  -ian/-ean  means  ‘of  or
pertaining to (this person/place)’; -esque means ‘in the style of (the person)’: so
Dantesque, Kafkaesque or Junoesque . The last of these, intriguingly, is defined
as  either  ‘of  regal  beauty’  or  ‘large,  buxom  and  (usually)  beautiful’,  depending
on which dictionary you read. Really, if the dictionaries can’t agree, what hope is
there for the rest of us?
Most  of  these  adjectives  are  spelled  with  a  capital  letter,  though  caesarean  has
come a long way from Julius Caesar and is now often seen with a lower case c .
Foodstuffs that are named after their place of origin – champagne, parmesan and
the  like  –  are  another  vague  area:  strictly  speaking  they  are  based  on  proper
nouns, but the more generically they are used, the more it becomes ‘acceptable’
to drop the capital. It seems perverse, for example, to insist on using a capital C
for New Zealand Cheddar , on the basis that the cheese is named after a place in
Somerset, England.